Stevenson Motorsport repeated the result of a year ago to win the GT class as Grand-Am made its annual visit to Montreal.
The Camaro driven by Robin Liddell and John Edwards started from pole position and was able to break free from much of the contact that was happening behind them. Despite losing radio communication late on in the race, Liddell survived a late race charge from the second placed car in the GT class to win by just over half a second at the end of the race.
It was the team’s second victory in the GT class in 2012.
“Mentally, it was quite tough,” said Liddell. “With the Ferrari challenging at the end, we gave it everything we had, especially those last 10 laps. The rear tires were going off a bit, so when I had a gap, I looked after them as much as I could and saved them for the end. It was pretty nail-biting because he was running me down. But once again, Stevenson Motorsports and the Chevy Camaro come away with the win here. We’ve got such a good record here.”
“I wasn’t aware of the radio issue at first; then I realized I had knocked the ear plugs out. I fumbled around, got them back in after I saw the sign board and knew they wanted to do something. I got the ear plugs back in, got back in radio communication and pitted when they told me come down. It was a good call on the team’s part getting that stop done in that window to the end.”
Team mate Edwards spoke of his nerves as he watched from the side-lines.
“Even when everything goes right, I hate sitting on the pit box at the end of the race,” said Edwards. “Because the pressure is on, but I can’t do anything about it. When I’m in the car, I’m a lot calmer and I see things coming up. But when I’m on the pit box, watching the Ferrari closing down. Fortunately when the radio issue happened, they went out with a sign board and got Robin back in and got it repaired. Near the end, we were good on fuel, no issues there, but it was a nail biter!”
It was a strong race for the Corvettes in the Daytona Prototype class as well. The pole sitting #99 Gainsco car finished second after a slow pit stop during a driver change, whilst finishing a close third was the #5 Action Express Racing machine. It was driven by David Donohue and home favourite Paul Tracy.
“David (Donohue) did a fantastic job. It’s been a long time for me to be in a competitive situation, and finish on the podium. It was a bit of a rough start. There was a lot of action at the beginning. A car spun in front of us. I was able to hang on and keep the car in good contention. Then David just drove like a pirate today with the knife between his teeth. He was just going for it, so that was just cool,” Tracy said.
